Love and religious boundaries: Love Jihad (Muslim Mirror)

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By MuslimMirror

By Ram Puniyani

This 1st Oct a Barially Court gave life imprisonment to a Muslim man in case of a complaint of sexual assault. In the judgment the justice commented that it is a case of love Jihad, which the police have failed to present that way. The girl was a Hindu. During the court proceedings the girl did withdraw the complaint on the ground that she had to lodge the complaint under the pressure of Hindutva group. The Lordship will have none of it; probably the social propaganda was ruling his verdict. Judge Diwakar in his judgment commented sui generis that Muslim men target Hindu women to get married. The judgment went on,

In simple words, love jihad is the practice of Muslim men to convert women from non-Muslim communities to Islam by pretending to love them and marrying them. Illegal conversions through love jihad are carried out by some anarchist elements of a particular religion or are made to do so or are involved in a conspiracy… A huge amount of money is required for love jihad. Hence, the fact of foreign funding in love jihad cannot be ruled out…” Foreign funding in love jihad is a novel concept; wish the judge had named the country which is sending the money for this.

While propaganda around love jihad was the first one in jihad series, now of course there are number of jihads which are popularized, land jihad, UPSC jihad, flood jihad, Corona Jihad amongst others. There are downright communal anchors which specialize in tabulating the types of jihad, if Muslims are in near or remote way to any happening. This is a classic case of trivial issues being magnified to demonize the religious community, which is regarded as belonging to ‘foreign religion’ and is targeted in covert and overt way to be presented as the ‘enemy other’. This creation of ‘enemy other’ lies at root of communal politics, Hindu Nationalist politics, which is dominating the social scenario in India.

Propaganda about love jihad is not very old. Just a couple of decades earlier some Christian Bishops from Kerala started this calumny and it was picked up more intensely by Hindu nationalists. Since their propaganda machinery is well oiled from RSS Shakhas, to RSS run schools, sections of media, social media and a parallel social media with IT cell in particular. The propaganda that there is an organization funding the Muslim youth to lure Hindu girls was investigated and was found to be a hoax.

This story was originally published in muslimmirror.com. Read the full story here.

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